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Quarterly Voice

DignityUSA thanks Jim & Evelyn Whitehead for initiating, soliciting and shepherding these three thought-provoking, hopeful QV issues on Transgender Spirituality, a topic that challenges the boundaries of traditional Catholic thinking, and one that speaks to the very core of Dignity-USA’s mission. As I have often stated, “Let’s make the ‘T’ in LGBTQ visible, integrated, and supported within DignityUSA and within our Church and society.”

DignityUSA thanks the Whiteheads for writing these thought-provoking, hopeful essays on Transgender Spirituality, a topic that challenges the boundaries of traditional Catholic thinking and one that speaks to the very core of DignityUSA’s mission. Special thanks are due to DignityUSA Secretary, Mary Kaye Radtke, for her professional photos. Three of the essays are compiled herein; three more will be featured in the next issue of QV.

We celebrate the success of DignityUSA’s 21st Biennial Convention, which marks over 42 years of ministry and advocacy for the LGBT community in the Catholic Church. Dignity’s call to reform and justice for those marginalized within the Church has now bridged several generations, and the fruits of this unceasing labor were evident at this year’s national gathering, which brought together nearly 300 attendees from across the country, with a span of over eight decades in age.

"For the vast majority of Catholics, the social justice teachings of the church trump the conservative and institutional inertia of the Vatican and its hierarchy . . . Indeed, 63% of Catholics in this country support marriage equality, a rate that is 10% higher than that of the general public. Catholics will no more heed official Archdiocesan opposition to marriage equality than they do the church's head-in-the-sand proscription against birth control."

" . . . knowing in my heart that it IS possible to be a Catholic and a lesbian . . . and knowing that without the work of Dignity countless GLBT Catholics (and straight Catholics for that matter) would not know this truth. And although I don’t label myself as a Catholic the way I used to, I still have an endearing fondness, a particular affection, for the denomination of my youth, and as such am still here on the Catholic side-lines, a bit war-weary, but still in the fight.